King Regis Quotes

EXPLICIT LIBER REGIS QUONDAM REGIS FUTURI THE BEGINNING

This being true for the ordinary Universe, that all sense-impressions are dependent on changes in the brain we must include illusions, which are after all sense-impressions as much as “realities” are, in the class of “phenomena dependent on brain-changes.

What a curious man you are!’ she said. ‘Why should you disbelieve the history?’ ‘I disbelieve the history because it isn’t history,’ answered Father Brown. ‘To anybody who happens to know a little about the Middle Ages, the whole story was about as probable as Gladstone offering Queen Victoria a cigar. But does anybody know anything about the Middle Ages? Do you know what a Guild was? Have you ever heard of salvo managio suo? Do you know what sort of people were Servi Regis? ‘No, of course I don’t,’ said the lady, rather crossly. ‘What a lot of Latin words!’ ‘No, of course,’ said Father Brown. ‘If it had been Tutankhamen and a set of dried-up Africans preserved, Heaven knows why, at the other end of the world; if it had been Babylonia or China; if it had been some race as remote and mysterious as the Man in the Moon, your newspapers would have told you all about it, down to the last discovery of a tooth-brush or a collar-stud. But the men who built your own parish churches, and gave the names to your own towns and trades, and the very roads you walk on — it has never occurred to you to know anything about them. I don’t claim to know a lot myself; but I know enough to see that story is stuff and nonsense from beginning to end. It was illegal for a money-lender to distrain on a man’s shop and tools. It’s exceedingly unlikely that the Guild would not have saved a man from such utter ruin, especially if he were ruined by a Jew. Those people had vices and tragedies of their own; they sometimes tortured and burned people. But that idea of a man, without God or hope in the world, crawling away to die because nobody cared whether he lived — that isn’t a medieval idea. That’s a product of our economic science and progress. The Jew wouldn’t have been a vassal of the feudal lord. The Jews normally had a special position as servants of the King. Above all, the Jew couldn’t possibly have been burned for his religion.’ ‘The

Iedolas : A curious old law I still permit in the outlands. A thief who escapes his captor can no longer be held to account for his crime. Regis : A warning to the victim? Never show weakness, lest you forgo the hand of justice. Iedolas : Oh no, good king. Far from it. It is a warning to the hand of justice itself: Never to loose its grip.

But it was too late for another effort then. For that time it was his destiny to die, or, as some say, to be carried off to Avilion, where he could wait for better days. For that time it was Lancelot’s fate and Guenever’s to take the tonsure and the veil, while Mordred must be slain. The fate of this man or that man was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea. The cannons of his adversary were thundering in the tattered morning when the Majesty of England drew himself up to meet the future with a peaceful heart. EXPLICIT LIBER REGIS QUONDAM REGISQUE FUTURI THE BEGINNING